Google Buzz Gets An API; Will Be Integrated Into Seesmic, TweetDeck, And More

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Since Google Buzz was first released, there’s been one major feature that’s been noticeably missing: an API. Soon after the service was launched we hacked together our own ‘Share with Buzz’ button, and Google launched a set of ‘real’ share buttons two months later. Unfortunately if a developer wanted to do a more robust integration, they were still out of luck — that’s why you haven’t really seen Buzz integrated into any major Twitter/Facebook clients, and it’s really held Buzz back. Today that’s changing, as Google is launching a set of Buzz APIs, which will eventually allow developers to do everything main Buzz client integrated into Gmail can do, including read comments, add rich media, liking and more.

I’m at Google I/O, where Buzz team member Chris Chabot is detailing the new API (this post will be updated throughout the course of the session).

Numerous popular services, including Tweetdeck and Seesmic, are among the APIs launch partners (you can see a full list of them here). Other apps with Buzz integration Boxee, the Meebo Bar, Plancast, and Socialwok.

Authentication is done using OAuth (though Chabot notes that this requires two interstitial screens, which the team realizes is not ideal).

Chabot says more is on the way. In the future, Buzz will get full-push support.

Seesmic has integrated Buzz into their Android, Desktop, and Web apps. You can find out more info on the Seesmic integration here.

Socialwok also showed off their integration. In the future they plan to use Buzz attachments to integrate rich media, use Salmon for comment federation, and offer ‘keyword monitoring’ into its search engine.

End-users opt into using applications built with the Google Buzz API via an interstitial confirmation screen outlining the application’s requested access scope (read-only, read/write, etc.). They can see which apps have access to their data and can disable access at any time from the Google Accounts page, the Google Dashboard, the “Buzz” tab in Gmail Settings, or from the app itself.

This initial iteration of the API includes support for fetching public per-user activity feeds, fetching authorized and authenticated per-user activity feeds (both what the user creates, and what they see), searching over public updates (by keyword, by author, and by location), posting new updates (including text, html, images, and more), posting comments, liking updates, retrieving and updating profiles and social graphs, and more. The best way to get started is to dive right in and begin reading the Google Buzz API developer documentation.